At the present time, grinding of workpieces is conducted with grinding wheels having a grinding surface formed of a particulate abrasive material bonded by or embedded in a matrix such as organic resins, vitreous materials and metals. The abrasive particulates have a generally uniform size so that uniform grinding to form smooth surfaces can be attained for a given metal across the entire surface that contacts the grinding wheel. In addition, it is desirable that such smooth surfaces can be formed with surface removal rate sufficiently high so as to render the grinding process commercially attractive. For each grinding application there is an appropriate abrasive grit size which is optimum for the intended purpose. For example, in removing slag from cast steel, the preferred abrasive particle size is 1 mm, while finer abrasive particles of approximately 40 to 120 mesh are used in finish grinding of the surfaces.
Abrasive particles now are made by crushing a large billet produced from molten abrasive material. The billet is fractured and the particles having a size within the desired range then are separated such as by sieving. This procedure obviously is undesirable since a large portion of the crushed billet does not have the proper particle size and must either be reprocessed or discarded. Other applications for uniform size metal or metal alloy particles include obtaining uniform size metal powders that can be utilized to form articles by conventional powder metallurgy techniques.
It would be highly desirable to provide a method for forming uniform size particles of an abrasive material. Furthermore, it would be desirable to provide such a method which is applicable to metal, metal alloys or ceramics. In addition, it would be desirable to provide such a method wherein there is little or no waste material produced outside the desired particle size range.